For those whose lives don't count

Opposing BDS is not only about supporting Israel; it’s about hating Arabs

Decision makers in the West are not like lay people. They are not oblivious or media-susceptible when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They studied the conflict thoroughly in college. They know how it started. They know the grand theft of a nation that took place. They are fully aware of the ongoing humiliation of the Palestinians under Israeli apartheid. They know the numbers of Palestinian civilians Israel has killed. They know how Palestinians have to spend hours of their every day at check points just to travel within their own land.

They know all of that and perhaps other, even more troubling things than we know. So for someone like New York governor Andrew Cuomo to boldly state his strong opposition to the BDS movement, with white-hot vigor and wonderous momentum, it cannot only be a sign of loving Israel all that much. It must also be a sign of deep hatred toward Arabs at the very same time, and we need to start ackowledging this.

Let’s face it, people in the West don’t exactly grow up thinking positively of Arabs or Muslims. Thanks to the media and special interest groups, the picture painted in the heads of people is not exactly flattering. Whenever you have a large group of people with such a predisposition, you will invariably run into “hate nuclei” – certain individuals with an exaggerated representaion of that widespread negative perspective.

The same applies to racism or oppressing women: society in general is prone to such ailments, albeit to a mild degree in most people. Some, however, retain strong racist/mysoginistic predilections. Politicians are no exception, and governor Cuomo is such an example of strong hatred against Arabs.

One might think that this accusation of hate is too presumptive, but the facts on the ground in regards to what the Palestinians have endured and still do, as well as about the illegality of the Israeli occupation and the practices that accompany it, are too damning. The utter starkness of the injustice, the severity of which invariably converts any westerner into a Palestinian supporter just by visiting the occupied territories, is just too morally obvious for Israel supporters to be deemed devoid of hate, even seething hate. It just has to be true, particularly for those who know the facts on the ground.

To illustrate how this must be true, we need not go any further than examining public statements made by staunch Zionists within Israel, where political correctness is not as closely observed as it is in Cuomo’s New York. These statements almost never stop at loving Israel – they reliably cross into a clear anti-Arab sentiment in a way that makes it appear not as a peripheral component of Zionism, but as a prime motivation for it. Here are a few recent such statements: